Category Archives: Photography

General photography natter — gear, thoughts, ideas, and the odd photo.

Photography

Morning Meeting with Mr. Frost

Jack Frost, that is!

With Fridays now being part of my regular weekend routine, I’m finding time to look at the world through some fresh eyes. Darla gets up for work around 6am, and that leaves me a little time to slowly wake up, eat some breakfast, and await the sunrise.

This morning it was about 19 degrees, with frost all the surfaces. And not the crazy thick stuff, just a layer, with all the intricacies of the frost fingers visible. Way cool!

I took the camera, trike, new lens and new flash (watch for some retroblogging about some of that) out on the deck, and shot frost on my favorite glass table. This MP-E 65mm is just flat amazing! Most of what I shot was at 3x life size, with the 580EX flash handheld at various angles. Seeing that frost so close was a great way to energize me, wake up my brain, and get me moving this morning.

I still think I have a long way to go with shooting frost and other frozen objects, but if this morning’s any indicator, I think I’m on my way. The bad part is that there’s not too many more frosty days in store for us this season — spring is almost here, and then I switch to flowers and birds again!

And speaking of birds… I think this is the year that I can catch the killer hummingbird shot I’ve been stalking for years. With the 580EX, I think I’ll have the light to do it, and I’ve already been able to prove out slaving my crusty 420EX off it (the 420EX won’t work connected to the camera, but wireless off the 580EX, it seems to work fine — go figure), so I should have two angles of light. One longish PC cable, and I think I’ll be able to sit in the house with the 100-400mm lens, and never disturb the little guys.

Watch this space! 🙂

Photography

New Gear: Canon MP-E 65mm 1x-5x Macro Lens

My new lens finally arrived today. After PayPal snafus and FedEx snafus, it finally got in my hands.

And it’s a jewel.

First off, the thing looks pristine. I’m always leery of buying things on eBay, but I got such a great deal on the lens, lens sack and lens hood, it was hard for me to avoid. Frankly, if it’s had three uses prior to me putting it on my 40D, I’d be surprised.

I decided to do something quick and dirty, so I took a $5 gold coin, and decided to photograph it. Below is the size of it as compared to a quarter — it’s about dime-sized.

I’ve played with macro lenses before, but nothing like this beast. Everything I’ve read says that this is an incredibly rewarding lens, and can do wonderful things if you have the patience to practice with it. However, in my quick attempt at throwing everything together, here’s what I got.

The image below was taken at 2x life size, and shows a bunch of detail that would be hard to see with any lens I’ve had in my camera bag.

And now for the good stuff. The one below is at 5x life size, and all I can say is “Wow!”

Stay tuned for more playing with this really outstanding lens!

Photography

Waiting Anxiously

Last week, I bought a new (to me) lens from eBay — a Canon MP-E 65mm f/2.8 1-5x Macro lens — and it was supposed to be sent FedEx yesterday. I expect touchdown in the middle of the week.

This is a lens that will take my macro photography to a higher level. With it, I can blow tiny things up to five times their real size in the frame. Imagine filling a frame with something the size of a grain of rice. Or a bug’s eye. Or a dew droplet. You get the idea.

I can’t wait for this little dude to show up!

Photography

Beyond the Lens III

Two years ago, I entered a juried competition called Beyond the Lens at Framations. That experience encouraged me to start displaying my work, and I’ve been showing pieces at Framations ever since. BTL III is here, and once again, one of my pieces has been juried into the competition.

I got a call from Framations, and “Dark Crystal” has been selected for the exhibit. It’s an image I shot during one of the big ice storms here in St. Louis, and has been a favorite ever since. Once again, ice is being very, very good to me. 🙂

The reception is this Saturday, January 10th, from 1pm to 4pm at Framations, with the awards presented from 2.30pm. The exhibit will be up through February 8th. C’mon out to St. Charles, and join the fun!

Photography

The First Five Digital Years

Having just wrapped up getting all the images from 2008 up and posted, it’s dawned on me that 2008 was my fifth full year shooting with a DSLR. I started down this path in April 2003, when I put my Canon 10D around my neck, and I’ve never looked back. I still don’t shoot nearly as much as when I first got the 10D — that year, I ran over 20,000 frames through the 10D — but 2008 saw me shooting more than I had since 2005, and that’s a really good thing.

In those five years, Becky and I have travelled many, many, many miles over land (as well as a few trip via air) to get the shots that you see here and on colin-wright.com. We’ve driven long haul trips to Colorado (2003), the desert southwest (2004), the Outer Banks (2005), Yosemite NP (2005), Smokey Mountain NP (2006) and Glacier NP/Yosemite NP (2008). We’ve taken short jaunts to Suck Creek Mountain many, many times, along with short trips to the Lake of the Ozarks and other close-by destinations. We’ve flown to Jamaica (2002 and 2003) and the Dominican Republic (2006). Through all this travel, I’ve had a Canon DSLR body nearby, and have captured so many of the wonders we’ve seen as we’ve been fortunate enough to travel.

Five years of going down this path has netted a treasure-trove of almost 75,000 images. There’s not a time that I stroll through our images without finding an image that suddenly captures my imagination. It’s been a great ride.

With that in mind, I’d like to start working on a photo book and collection, documenting some of the highlights of my first five digital years, with the expectation to get it printed/published toward late summer. At this point, this is just an idea in my head so I don’t have any details, but watch for more info here as I start nailing down some of the details.

Photography

Group Shoot at the Zoo

A bunch of us from the photo group at work decided we needed to take an outing, so today we cruised to the St. Louis Zoo to play with the critters big and small. The weather was cruddy — low 40s and occassional mist, with really gray skies — but it wasn’t oppressively hot like every other time I’ve been to the zoo.

The six of us kinda split up and wandered around in a couple of groups. I started with the sun bear, worked my way around a big pond filled with all kinds of birds to the sea lions, the big cats and wrapped up with the rest of the bears. Frankly, of all of it, the big cats impressed me the most. There’s just something about those giant animals playing and acting just like common housecats that’s really appealing to me. In fact, there was this “kitten” — about the size of a medium-sized dog — that was “playing” with the humans. He’d sneak up, hiding behind the concrete, crouch, twitch and run toward the wall, “pouncing” toward the folks watching. It was a hoot to watch.

In all, I popped about 500-600 shots across our three hour stay… only to find out when I got home that I blew the focus on almost half of them. There were some shots that were brilliantly focused, and many that were obviously out of focus. I shot almost exclusively with my 100-400/3.5-5.6L lens, and expected much better out of it, even with the dreary lighting. I don’t know if I just wasn’t paying enough attention to the focus, if I was rushing things, or if I’ve got an equipment problem. Whichever the answer is, I need to get back down there for another shoot, and see if I can duplicate the problems I was having.

Despite the results, it was a lot of fun to go play with the critters, and talk shop for the morning. That was well worth the trip!

Photography

When I Say “Roid”, You Say “Polar”

A colleague sent along this article, noting the official demise of Polaroid film. This month will be the last production month of this glorious film.

It truly is the end of an era. I have hundreds of old Polaroids shot by my parents and grandparents, and still love the look of them. To be fair though, I’m not as big a fan of the 1980’s vintage Polaroid prints — they all seem to be a bit fuzzy, and didn’t have the whole “peel off” processing of their ancestors. And man, nothing smelled quite like a Polaroid print. (Yes, I was one of those kids that also loved the smell of ditto reproduction, too.)

I love digital, but it’s real hard to hand a digital print to someone straight out of the camera – you have to carry a photo printer with you, and that’s just not practical a lot of times. A lot of the allure of Polaroid prints was that instant “shoot and share” that digital just can’t deliver.

One day, not too far off, I think there’ll be a whole generation for whom the word “film” will either evoke a comment about how old that is, or will only be associated with motion pictures. That’s a sad day comin’.

Photography, Weather

There Be Bison Here!

This morning, we awoke to a bit of a winter wonderland. Overnight, there’d been a quiet snow, only about an inch, but it sat so pretty on the surfaces of everything. With that view, I thought I needed to get out and shoot, so we headed south to Lone Elk SP.

However, the further south we got, the more the snow disappeared. What we didn’t know was that we were on the southern edge of the snow, which meant Lone Elk didn’t get much more than a dusting. That was disappointing.

The bison were out though, which made up for it. We came across about a dozen head just inside their area of the park, slowly grazing in the snowy grass. That’s when I was pounded over the head — I definitely need to get some work with dark objects against bright backgrounds, as those shots seem to reek pretty badly for me. (See the photos below.)

Ideally, one of Moose’s expeditions into the snows of Yellowstone or Yosemite would be the best place to learn these tricks — the best of all environments, no rushing to beat the melt of the snow, and folks around me that can help me learn this kind of shooting. In The Lou, it’s a real crap shoot about when a snow might come, and frequently, I’ve gotta work around work, or rush to beat the melt. A little focus could do this kid some good!